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and loss has blossomed into a tradition that embodies the very essence of the holiday spirit—not just during Christmas, but throughout the year.
Despite the effort these parties require, Linda hosts at least four each year (Valentine’s Day, in the springtime, in the autumn, and in December just before Christmas).
“I’m happy to do it,” Linda says simply, though anyone who has attended one of her events can only imagine the work that goes into the gatherings, and the word “happy” barely scratches the surface of the joy she radiates while serving her guests. “It just brings me so much happiness, and I hope it brings my friends some happiness too.”
As the Christmas holidays approach and families across the country prepare to gather around tables laden with food and laughter, Linda Bacon’s story serves as a reminder that the greatest gifts we can give aren’t wrapped in paper and ribbon—they’re wrapped in time, attention, and love. Deep Roots in Tattnall County Soil Linda Sue Nail was born in 1947 to Ray and Reba Nail in the heart of Tattnall County’s farming community. She grew up near Manassas, just off Anderson Church Road, where her father worked a large expanse of farmland, cultivating tobacco, corn, and cotton while raising cows and hogs.
Life on the farm taught Linda about hard work from an early age. Her mother made her a bag out of flour sacks when she was about three years old, and Linda remembers heading out to her daddy’s white cotton field and filling it with cotton, thinking it was the best fun ever. But childhood innocence eventually gave way to reality. “When I got to be a teenager, picking cotton and putting it in a sack wasn’t fun at all,” she recalls with a grin. “It was hard work.”
While her father tended the fields, her mother was busy keeping up the house and raising children. In the 1950s, Ray and Reba Nail became the first foster parents in Tattnall County, opening their home to children who needed temporary shelter and care. They helped parent, raise, and love many children, some of whom stayed for extended periods.
“Fostering [children] was very hard on Mama,” Linda remembers. The family fostered two children for two years, and her mother grew deeply attached to them. When the children left, it broke her mother’s heart. “After that, my daddy didn’t think it was a good idea to foster kids anymore. My mother tended to get depressed easily, and connecting with the children and having to say ‘good bye’ was just too hard for her, so that was that.”
The experience of watching her parents open their home to strangers, of witnessing both the joy and heartbreak that come with caring for others, would plant seeds in Linda’s life.
Linda and her younger sister, Mildred, were raised in a strict, religious environment by God-fearing parents who loved the Lord and attended church faithfully. The family alternated between Little Flock Primitive Baptist Church and Anderson Primitive Baptist Church, as each only held Sunday services once per month. There were no instruments in those churches, just voices raised in worship.
The rules were firm— no drinking in the Nail home, absolutely no cursing, the girls weren’t allowed to wear shorts in public, etc.—but there was a lot of love in the household. Linda speaks of her father with reverence that hasn’t dimmed in the nearly six decades since his death.
“My father was the best man I’ve ever known,” she says. “He had a kind heart and took people in who were down on their luck. He treated blacks as equals in the time of segregation, when things were a lot different.”
Her father, Ray Nail, died in 1965 of a heart attack when he was just 43 years old, leaving a wife and two daughters to mourn him. Reba would live another 50 years, passing away at age 93, but the mark Ray left on Linda’s character proved indelible. A Love Story and a Life Built Together Linda first met her future husband, Franklin Bacon, when she was four years old, and he was seven, though romance was far from anyone’s mind during a childhood outing to pick wild violets. Love didn’t spark until more than a decade later, when 15-yearold Linda and 19-year-old Franklin both attended a barbecue at H.L. “Hop” Knight’s home.
“We saw each other and talked a little bit. The following week, Franklin told people, ‘I’m going to marry that girl one day,’” Linda recalls. “And he did.”
They married in July 1965, rushing the wedding because Franklin had been drafted and was being deployed to Germany during the Vietnam War. Linda became an Army wife, moving in with her sisterin- law and finding work as an operator while her new husband served overseas.
Franklin quickly rose to the rank of Sergeant and returned home in April 1967, returning to his work with the Department of Transportation. The young couple tried their hand at various living arrangements— renting a house off Lynntown Road, living at Linda’s parents’ farm where Franklin attempted to farm 165 acres (“But we realized that he wasn’t cut out for farming,” Linda says), and briefly staying in Linda’s grandparents’ house after her grandmother passed away.
Eventually, they settled on property Linda had inherited along Highway 292 and Hub Jarriel Road. For 50 years, Linda has called this parcel of ancestral land “Home Sweet Home.” The land once belonged to her paternal grandparents, Roach and Sula Callaway Nail, whose old wooden house still stands nearby, slowly being reclaimed by the wildness that has grown up around it.
“Back then, there were Nails all around us,” Linda recalls, her voice carrying the weight of memory and family connections as she points down a dirt road. “Uncle Jim lived over there, and Ben Nail lived about a mile that way.”
Between 1968 and 1975, the Bacon family grew. First came Timothy “Timmy” in 1968, then Mechelle in 1969, and finally baby Ramada in 1975. Linda loved being a mother to her three children and a wife to Franklin, who was an avid reader and loved traveling to the mountains and beyond, and collecting rocks (Linda still has Franklin’s paperback westerns and his rock collection displayed prominently in her home).
Franklin developed some health problems and retired from the DOT in 1995. For the seven years after his retirement, he cleared property for mobile homes with his tractor. For 47 years, they shared life’s ups and downs, until Franklin Bacon passed away on February 17, 2013, after a diagnosis of Necrotizing Granulomatous Disease and years of declining health. He was 69 years old.
Linda and the children had a monument erected with a large center panel that showed a waterfall and mountain path because “He just loved the mountains so much.”
In a book titled “Through the Years, Love Revealed,” which Linda wrote and published in 2016, she wrote, “We shared a love not many couples ever experienced. It was deep abiding never ending, always and forever. True many things happened along the way. We sometimes hurt each other by our words and actions but nothing was able to break the love we possessed for each other.”
Finding Purpose in Service The death of a spouse after nearly five decades of marriage can leave a void that seems impossible to fill. Many widows withdraw into grief, and no one would have blamed Linda for doing the same. But Linda Bacon is not most people.
“It was hard after Franklin died,” she acknowledges. “But I decided to start doing more for others. I’ve always thought that if you help others, then you won’t have time to get absorbed in yourself.”
It was a philosophy her mother had recognized in her decades earlier. “Mama used to say that if she gave me candy that I’d share with everyone,” Linda remembers.
In 2015, two years after Franklin’s death, Linda had the idea that she would begin doing what she did best: Be a friend to all with kindness, trust, and mutual support. She knew that to build strong, lasting friendships, she must project the qualities she wished to receive from others, such as being a good listener, being trustworthy, and making an effort to connect.
And so she started hosting a ladies’ luncheon in her home that year. What began as an evening event during the holidays, with the house decorated in Christmas lights, evolved into seasonal luncheons held during the daylight hours.
“I changed it to a luncheon so the women who attended didn’t have to drive after dark,” Linda explains, always thinking of her guests’ comfort and safety. The Hostess With the Mostest To call Linda Bacon’s seasonal gatherings mere “luncheons” is to call the Grand Canyon a ditch. These are big social events—carefully planned, lovingly executed productions that reflect Linda’s generous spirit and her gift for making people feel cherished.
Linda has kept detailed records of the foods she prepared for each luncheon since that very first event in 2015. The notebook chronicles a decade continued from page
of people invited into her home and the menus of the day, ensuring she doesn’t repeat dishes too frequently and documenting her culinary journey. Sometimes she prepares exotic new foods, allowing her friends to try different dishes. About 15 women attend, many of whom are members of Cedar Creek Primitive Baptist Church, though Linda attends Collins Crossroads Church.
One Christmas, she hosted a family Christmas lunch, and the food was lined up on Linda’s countertops, prompting a question she is often asked: “Linda, you fixed all of this yourself?” The answer is always, “Yes.” Linda prepares entire meals and multiple desserts single-handedly. She decorates her home with the kind of attention to detail that transforms spaces into grand experiences. Every napkin is placed with care, every centerpiece thoughtfully chosen, every corner of her home arranged to create warmth and welcome.
“I think it makes people feel special when they see that you’ve decorated your home and prepared an entire meal for them,” she says.
And it doesn’t stop there.
“At my luncheons, I try to give each lady a gift to take home—just a little something,” Linda says. “Again, I want them to feel special and loved.”
At Christmas, Linda takes the gift-giving up a notch, purchasing several presents and organizing a game where she writes numbers on wrapped gifts and attendees roll dice to determine which they’ll start with before playing a white elephant-style exchange (taking turns picking or stealing gifts from one another) meant to be fun and lighthearted.
Linda hosts a Valentine’s luncheon, a spring luncheon, a fall luncheon, and a Christmas luncheon. Each carries the theme of its season, but all share the same underlying message: In a world that often feels hurried and impersonal, there is still a place where women can gather and be themselves, sharing laughter and love.
The luncheons embody one aspect of what the holidays are supposed to be about—not the commercial gift purchases and excess, but the simple act of gathering together, of creating space for fellowship, of giving generously without expecting anything in return. Linda has taken the spirit of the holiday season and extended it across the entire calendar year, proving that Christmas isn’t just a date—it’s a way of living and giving. A Ministry Beyond the Table Linda’s love and generosity extend far beyond her dining room. One weekend each month, she prepares 50 cupcakes and takes them to Tattnall Healthcare Center, a nursing home in Reidsville.
“I take the cupcakes and hand them out to the residents there,” she explains. “I want them to know that someone cares about them—that I care about them. So many of the people there don’t have family around to visit with them. It can be lonely for them. Others have a low quality of life as they are dealing with significant health problems.”
She tells the story of one particularly difficult resident who was initially hostile to Linda’s kindness. “At first, she would say, ‘I don’t want your mess,’ and I’d just walk away,” Linda recalls. But Linda Bacon doesn’t give up on people. She kept returning, kept offering her a sweet treat, kept loving. “Then one day, I offered her a cupcake and she smiled and said she was happy to see me. She took one of my cupcakes, and as I left, she said, ‘God is good.’ God worked wonders with her!”
And every Sunday, Linda goes “visiting”—an old-fashioned practice that has largely disappeared from modern life. “When I was growing up, that’s what everybody did,” she explains. “We visited with friends and family. It’s a lost art. So I just go by to see how my friends are doing, to spend time with them. I don’t want to be wrapped up in myself. I want to care about others.”
For about 11 years, Linda has also made monthly trips to Garfield, where she visits New Beginnings in Christ, a drug and alcohol treatment and rehabilitation center. There, she serves as a motivator and friend to those fighting addiction and trying to rebuild their lives.
“Years ago, a friend invited me to go there and share my story with the people there, and I did, and I’ve been doing it ever since,” Linda says. “I talk about the Lord and how he has been with me every step of my life. And I often talk about thankfulness and gratitude.”
At Christmastime, Linda prepares 60 gift bags for the residents there, each filled with a notebook, a pen, a book, fruit, socks, a candy cane, and an ornament. “I think the holidays are especially hard for people who are struggling with addiction, especially those who have been separated from their families,” she explains.
W hether she’s in her own home entertaining friends, in a nursing home offering cupcakes and conversation, or at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center offering hope and encouragement, Linda Bacon is always giving. She has taken the lessons learned from her father—who took in people down on their luck and treated everyone with dignity—and transformed them into a life of loving service. A True Servant’s Heart
When asked about her motivations, Linda Bacon is characteristically humble. “I don’t see myself as special,” she insists. “I see myself as a servant of God. I often pray, ‘Lord, I feel that I should be doing something. Let me know what I need to do to serve you.’” Her faith isn’t just Sunday morning religion—it’s the foundation of everything she does. Her book, “Through the Years, Love Revealed,” documents her life and her spiritual journey— the way God’s love has sustained her through the valleys and the mountains alike.
Her philosophy is simple: “I believe that we only receive after we’ve given.”
She lives her life to love the Lord God with all of her heart, with all her soul, and with all her mind, and she loves her neighbors as herself. These aren’t just words—they’re a blueprint for her life. Every luncheon, every cupcake, every visit, every gift bag, every moment of fellowship is an expression of these important calls to action from her savior.
“When I die, I want to leave a legacy of love and kindness,” Linda says.
For those who know her, there’s no question that she’s succeeding. In a world that often feels divided and disconnected, Linda Bacon has created connections. She has shown that the holiday spirit isn’t something to be packed away with the Christmas decorations— it’s something to be lived every single day.
As Linda puts it, “I love the Lord God … He saved my soul and forgave me my sins. I just hope that others will be driven to Christ by the light that is in me. He gives me peace that the world will never be able to.”
This season, as we gather around our own tables with family and friends, as we consider what gifts to give and what traditions to honor, Linda Bacon’s life reminds us of something essential: The greatest gift we can give is ourselves— our time, our attention, our love. The holidays aren’t about perfect decorations or expensive presents. They’re about showing up, opening our hearts and our homes, and making others feel valued.
Linda Bacon has been showing up for her entire lifetime, creating spaces of warmth and welcome, proving that one person with a servant’s heart can indeed make a difference. In Linda Bacon’s home, every season is a season of giving, every gathering is an act of love, and every guest is a treasured friend. That’s a holiday spirit worth celebrating all year long.
